Key Customers

The first step in getting a customer is knowing your customer — often referred to as the target market. While a technology company may not actually sell a product for many months or even years after they begin the process of developing their technology, knowing the customer from the very beginning of the process is important as it ensures that they develop a product that meets the needs of the customer.

Selling a product direct to consumers is much different than selling a product to a business and this is where a strategy for engaging key customers comes into play. The relationship a technology entrepreneur develops with a particular client can catapult them from obscurity to a state of global recognition. Often, first customers or strategic customers become integral to the development and ongoing evolution of a technology and, as such, tech companies are wise to know everything they can about their customers.

BENEVITY

Know your clients. Focus. And then follow through until the deals are inked. That’s the advice for new start-ups from Calgary entrepreneur Bryan de Lottinville.

“A strategic focus on client segmentation and acquisition is absolutely necessary, especially for many technology or other startup companies that don’t have tens of millions of venture capital to support them,” he says.

“Most importantly though, they need to execute because all the best focus and strategy won’t matter a hoot if you can’t get those key relationships to buy what you’re selling.”

De Lottinville knows what he’s talking about. He’s the founder and chief executive officer of Benevity, a Calgary-based tech company that aims to improve the impact of corporate giving programs. Founded in 2008, Benevity offers global online solutions for volunteering and charitable donations. The company currently has 37 staff and services 45 countries, but does most of its work in Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

“A key element of relationship building for us has been to consistently execute with a level of professionalism, passion and client responsiveness that belies our relatively small size and makes change management more seamless,” he says.

“Great technology is necessary, but rarely sufficient.”

There have been challenges.

“Everyone wants to be innovative, but almost no one wants to be first,” says de Lottinville. “A critical challenge for us was building our capability and base of client relationships to the point where a Fortune 100 company — and the corporate throngs involved in their IT procurement and implementation processes — would be comfortable in choosing us and acting as an early adopter.”

So far, so good. Major Benevity clients include Ameriprise Financial, Canadian Pacific, New York Life Insurance Company, Roche Pharmaceuticals, and a Fortune 500-ranked producer of athletic gear and footwear.

“Since we needed early adopters, we also tried to focus on companies that showed progressive thinking or other indications of embracing innovation,” he says.

But, he notes, his team had to be careful what they wished for once they landed those first few big clients. “These huge companies are used to getting what they want and are not bashful about asking.”

That includes thinking about everything from data security to privacy to compliance issues, all the while “providing best-in-class functionality,” he says.

Then again, de Lottinville is no stranger to big business transactions. He was the chief operating officer at iStock Photo, which was sold to Getty Images in 2006 for $50 million US. And before that, he was the executive vice-president of SMED International, a modular office furniture manufacturer that was sold for $250 million to Haworth in 2000.

In 2014, de Lottinville estimates Benevity will redistribute $150 million of charitable donations, “but in five years, if that isn’t a billion, I’ll be ashamed of myself,” he says.

Benevity streamlines the giving process — tax receipts, donor contact lists, things that are “essential but not strategic” for a charity’s success. Benevity’s automated systems mean charities save money, so they can focus on what they do best: help people who need it.

“Since scale and transaction velocity are key to delivering on our vision for an aggregated, automated platform that drives efficiencies, we focused on acquiring a critical mass of something that would drive growth and take-up amongst all of the targeted constituents,” says de Lottinville.

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